MUSIC: VIDEO

MUSIC: VIDEO; Seeing Gould's Alchemy Up Close

By ALLAN KOZINN

Published: September 21, 2003

HOME video was in its infancy when the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould died in 1982, but had he lived longer, he would unquestionably have embraced video as an extension of what he had been doing for nearly two decades. Gould was as famous for having given up live performance in favor of recordings as he was for his galvanizing interpretations of Bach. Soon after he retired from the stage at 31, in 1964, he began to study the technical side of recording, and he eventually took complete control of his sessions.

He also had a parallel career making television and radio programs for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. They included solo and chamber performances of repertory ranging from Bach to Schoenberg, as well as oddities like Strauss's ''Enoch Arden,'' usually with discussions to set the stage. Like Leonard Bernstein, Gould saw the power and potential of television as a medium through which to explain and convey classical music to huge audiences. And he was one of the few musicians who had both the imagination and the opportunity to tap that power fully.

Sony Classical, Gould's record label, released a lot of this material in an expansive VHS series in the 1990's, with volumes devoted to Beethoven and 20th-century music, an ample selection of Bach performances and an installment devoted to Gould's conducting. But most of these programs have long been out of print, and until recently, hardly any of Gould's video recordings were available on DVD. Now a hefty load of Gouldiana has hit the DVD bins, and much of it comes from the CBC, but those organically conceived programs remain unavailable.

Instead, the CBC has licensed three recent Gould documentaries -- ''Life and Times,'' a useful and fairly comprehensive biography; ''The Russian Journey,'' chronicling his 1957 visit to Moscow and St. Petersburg; and ''Extasis,'' a maddening festival of Gould worship -- to Kultur Video, which has released them separately and as a boxed set, ''The Glenn Gould Collection.''

There is better news from EMI Classics, which has released Bruno Monsaingeon's 1974 television film, ''The Alchemist,'' in its Classic Archive series. The first of several programs Mr. Monsaingeon made with Gould, this is the real deal: 2 hours 40 minutes of Gould performing a recital's worth of music as well as holding forth in interview segments and, generally, just being Gould, which is to say, an amusing but controlling eccentric.

A lengthy recording session sequence, Mr. Monsaingeon tells us in booklet notes, was fully scripted, down to which wrong note Gould would play during a bad take. His acting in this bogus documentary material is amazingly natural; if Mr. Monsaingeon had not confessed, few viewers would have been the wiser.

Chances are, a real Gould recording session did not differ greatly. In the first part of this segment, Gould works on the English Suite No. 1, taking a variety of tempos and approaches, and commenting on each. ''That's boring,'' he says of a stately reading of the first Bourrée, and he immediately plunges into a faster, high-voltage account. ''Too crazy'' is the verdict. He settles for something between, but leaning decidedly toward ''crazy.''

Later, he takes up Scriabin. To record ''Désir'' and ''Caresse Dansée'' (Op. 57, Nos. 1 and 2), he has his engineer set up microphones at increasing distances from the piano: the first pair right over the strings; the last, far enough away that they will pick up mostly reverberance. During playback, he sculptures the sound, having the engineer fade the various tracks in and out: a close sound for this phrase, a distant sound for the rejoinder. It's a bit loopy, but it's the kind of thing that made Gould an object of fascination in his time and has kept him one in the two decades since.

The recording session is the second of four segments in ''The Alchemist.'' The first and third also mix music with conversation (not scripted, Mr. Monsaingeon writes). In addition to Gould's disdain for touring and live performance, and his theories about recording, the topics cover a range of composers from Gibbons and Byrd to Schoenberg, Berg and Webern.

These discussions are punctuated by performances of the Toccata from Bach's Partita No. 6, the Intermezzo from Schoenberg's Suite (Op. 25), short pieces by Gibbons and Byrd, Webern's Variations (Op. 27) and Berg's Sonata (Op. 1), as well as an informal bash at Wagner's ''Meistersinger'' Act I Prelude. A substantial program, it is also a reminder of the breadth of Gould's interests.

The fourth part of the film dispenses with discussion and offers a complete reading of Bach's Sixth Partita.

Except for the Wagner, these performances are complete and thoroughly focused, and some -- the Bach partita and the Berg sonata, for example -- have a visceral power that Gould's audio recordings do not match. Gould was, after all, a remarkably visual performer. His preference for performing on a low chair made for a peculiar -- and thus signature -- posture, which he made even stranger by hunching over the keyboard or swaying away from it.